snare Drums sound like shit

[MikeCatlin]

Im pretty new to producing and u just got Logic Pro...now i ve gotten pretty good with everything and making the beats themselves, but my snares just dont have that explosion sound to them..any help?

[jrisreal]

sample an explosion...thatll give you some explosion in your drums

Nah, tbh i would like an answer too.

[Mannyyyyy]

ill up some of my snares i have give me like 2 minutes

[Mannyyyyy]

http://www.mediafire.com/?k8rshspmhka6hhc

i know how you feel, the very beginning of drums for me sample wise was terrible, now i just made your life a little easier

[Astral]

Start with good quality samples to begin with, adjust, compress, eq and layer to taste.

[ogunslinger]

you can't polish a turd... but you sure can layer it!

[budsteq]

http://www.mediafire.com/?k8rshspmhka6hhc

i know how you feel, the very beginning of drums for me sample wise was terrible, now i just made your life a little easier

cheers for the samples bud

[hasezwei]

you can't polish a turd... but you sure can layer it!

i disagree. i've had snares i thought were absolutely crap, then put them into battery, pitched/compressed/eq'd it and bam. was THE SNAP
if you then layer your polished turds it's gonna make your head explode.

but of course you're right if by turd you mean a horribly overcompressed or clipping or otherwise unusable sample.

[drokkr]

There has been a snare thread recently.

Use good quality samples, unless you are going for lofi sound but in this case you are clearly not.

Layer, EQ and experiment. After some time you will learn you own variation on this technique to have your own solid snares.

[jaydot]

Sometimes you can go overboard with stuff like fx and EQ and compression, it's finding that balance. But when you get it right it's worth it.

[zerbaman]

You need to boost at around 200hz in your EQ plugin. This will give your snares that bottom end boom.

I like going as deep as 100 on snares and 50 for kicks. Up to you at the end of the day

[Dreadfunk]

Pick 2 snares that sound really good already. One that is more low-mid thud, and one that has loads of snap (claps work good for this too). EQ so they don't conflict, and layer them up. Play with the envelopes.

[FuhNetIk]

I personally kill everything below about 150 hz, boost the living hell out of ~200hz (usually a bit higher), and then boost treble freqs slightly to taste.

[Sparxy]

I personally kill everything below about 150 hz, boost the living hell out of ~200hz (usually a bit higher), and then boost treble freqs slightly to taste.

Ditto. I tend to layer 3 or so snares, pick 3 with distinctly different peaks - I usually go with 2 actual snares, one with lots of mid punch and one with mid-high peaks, with a third that is a clap for the highs. Whack most of your effects on your clap and mid-high snare, leave your mid one and boost it around 200hz. I would then group all 3 and EQ the lot, lowcutting at 150hz and boost again at around 200hz. EQ boost high end, somewhere between 1k-10k that sounds good.

[jrisreal]

I personally kill everything below about 150 hz, boost the living hell out of ~200hz (usually a bit higher), and then boost treble freqs slightly to taste.

Ditto. I tend to layer 3 or so snares, pick 3 with distinctly different peaks - I usually go with 2 actual snares, one with lots of mid punch and one with mid-high peaks, with a third that is a clap for the highs. Whack most of your effects on your clap and mid-high snare, leave your mid one and boost it around 200hz. I would then group all 3 and EQ the lot, lowcutting at 150hz and boost again at around 200hz. EQ boost high end, somewhere between 1k-10k that sounds good.

this is good. sometimes, i just layer 7 or 8 snares lol just pick snares that have bits and pieces of the sound you are looking for

[JFK]

this is good. sometimes, i just layer 7 or 8 snares lol just pick snares that have bits and pieces of the sound you are looking for

Hows that working out for you? Getting any problems with transients cancelling each other out?

[Kombatant]

EQing and layering are the most important, but also negatively cutting frequencies out of everything else in the "snap" range gives it space to stand out. I also layer white noise on almost all my snares to give it more "pop" and high end.

[jrisreal]

this is good. sometimes, i just layer 7 or 8 snares lol just pick snares that have bits and pieces of the sound you are looking for

Hows that working out for you? Getting any problems with transients cancelling each other out?

i dont really know much about transients and that kind of stuff but heres what i have to say:
if it sounds good, do it...i do it when it sounds good, not always

[Basic A]

this is good. sometimes, i just layer 7 or 8 snares lol just pick snares that have bits and pieces of the sound you are looking for

Hows that working out for you? Getting any problems with transients cancelling each other out?

i dont really know much about transients and that kind of stuff but heres what i have to say:
if it sounds good, do it...i do it when it sounds good, not always

7-8 is overkill, even if they are organic sounding woody bits thats going to turn into an incomprehensible burst of white noise, snares need character, they become a HUGE driving force in dubstep, nothing worse then them being nonsense, if you keep your layer numbers down and focus more on building a texture with your layering and building volume on your mixer youll go far. They can set the color of a whole track together if selected right...

150 seems altogether too high rolling off, and Im a fan of claps too. The snare really should creat an impact on all 3 ranges, low, mid, and high, and present a cohesive instrument/texture as a whole. But, as sharm once said, snares shouldnt sound like bike tassle's. Try leaving your snare sample un eq'd, then using a send/return to put an eq on it and then put your reverb after the eq, so you get original sound + eq'd verbed one... when they sum back together youll get twice the top end or half the bottom depending on how you look at it... Alot nicer then a full roll-off, leaves mea ton the bone.

[hakka]

7-8 snares lol. Max you need is 2-3. Just make sure they are quality samples, even vengeance packs are good once you have eq'd them. My advice would be to just concentrate on getting 1 really good snare out of 2-3. Once you have eq'd them etc just export into one sample and play around with waveshapers.